Living Legend : The Cutting Room Floor
by Cass Eastham
Summary: Herein lies the shorts and clips of parts I liked, but I couldn't get them to fit within the plot. There is no continuity between them, nor do they fit anywhere in the Living Legend series. As Tony Daniels once put it, this is THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR.
1. The Rancor and the TIE

The Rancor and the TIE

 _The Empire has announced the crowning of a new Emperor. Han, Luke, Chewie, Lando, and Artoo Detoo raced to Coruscant in a covert operation to figure out who it is._

 _They've been gone for four days._

* * *

Threepio answered the door with a little bow and gestured Kess inside with the formality of a butler and the chatterbox of a housemaid. Thankfully, he turned quickly to get back to cooking dinner and Kess strolled easily towards the smooth white furniture and warm lighting of Alderaan decor.

Leia was already at the mini bar, alone but not lonely, reading one out of several handfuls of datacards. She raised her face and smiled at Kess's entry.

Kess strolled over with fists in her pockets. "Minister." She greeted with a formal nod, "How are you on this fine evening?"

"Would you like a drink?"

"Thank you, no." Kess slid onto an empty barstool. "I'm avoiding alcohol until he gets back."

Leia's brown eyebrow wrinkled, but her mouth grinned. "I didn't say it had to be alcohol."

"Ah." Kess eyed the drink that looked like some tropical concoction and realized Leia wouldn't be drinking alcohol anyway. Pregnant.

The other woman gestured at the mini bar with both hands. "It's fruit juice mania back there. Help yourself to whatever you like."

"Thanks," Kess slide out of the barstool and stepped around. For as small as the mini bar looked on the outside, it made efficient use of shelving and refrigeration on the inside. She didn't browse much and grabbed an aluminum can of iced java. She cracked it open to a quiet hiss. When her eyes lifted again to the bar top, a datapad - with a card already booted up - was sitting dead center for her.

Leia's eyes were already back on her own work. "Until dinner's ready, read."

Kess grabbed the datapad with a gasp of anticipation, "Is this from them?"

Brown eyes flicked up, but she smiled with warm sympathy. "No. It's the arguments for and against the religious law the Rantonan government is going to put to vote tomorrow."

"Ah ha." Kess pressed her mouth. "So when you said you needed a Jedi," she picked up the datapad and grinned. "You meant you just needed someone with the title."

Leia set her chin on her palm and shrugged an admitting eyebrow.

 _Of course it would only be the title,_ Kess thought, realizing again who she was talking to. Although the other woman wasn't entirely tested or trained, Kess believed it in her soul that there was nothing with the Force she could do that Leia couldn't do ten times better.

Obediently, Kess set her elbows on the bar and began to read about the Rantonan Proposal of Religious Law.

Within two sentences, her mind drifted to the mission. She closed her eyes and meditated away the worry.

Leia's eyes shifted up from her work, and pressed a sympathetic grin. "They probably just got there."

Kess's eyes popped open.

"It'll be a day or two before we hear from them. Don't worry so much."

"I'm trying but . . . Why aren't _you_ worried?"

Leia picked up her datapad again and ended the discussion with a soft smile. "Relax. They know what they're doing."

* * *

"AAAAAAaaaarrrrgggghhhhhhh!"

Artoo burned rubber out of the darkness, wailing his whistles.

A monster's growl echoed angry through dank corridors, far beneath the civilized levels of Coruscant. As that echo rolled down a long-abandoned market alley, so raced the human feet as fast as they could.

Lando was as full speed as his bleeding leg would carry him. Han stopped to take cover behind a support beam, and Luke raced past him with a glowing green lightsaber in hand. Chewie came in behind them all, but turned to shoot in concert with Han, and both trotted backwards for better cover.

Lando ducked into an abandoned shop and dropped his back against the wall. Leaving his bleeding leg stretched out in front of him, he slid down the wall until his butt plopped onto the dusty deck.

Luke fell to his knees next to him, still panting. He switched off his lightsaber in a rush to review the damage to the leg, and turned to Artoo for an emergency bandage the droid had already protruded from a cubby in his belly. Han and Chewie came around the corner, still firing behind them, and Luke didn't stop what he was doing to yell at them for it. "Stop! We're out! She'll go back!"

Han panted and relaxed a little, but he didn't holster his blaster. "She's pretty pissed off."

Chewie came around too, complaining in a low rumble and fumbling to load his crossbow with another charge.

Lando shouted out, "She _bit_ me!"

Luke tied the bandage around Lando's leg as he huffed. "We walked into her den, Lando. She was protecting her young. She wasn't trying to eat you."

Lando adjusted his seat on the floor and grimaced. "Tell that to my leg!"

Han licked the sweat from his lip as he peaked down the dark hallway. "Luke's right, she's returning to her den. Chewie and I can get back there and put her out."

Luke flared, and launched back to his feet to scold Han. "Don't kill her just because she's protecting her young."

Han dared a wide-eyed expression back at him, "We either do it now, or Lando gets his other leg bit off when we try to get back to the Falcon."

"Kill her now," Lando peeped in pain.

Luke combed back sweaty hair from his temple and offer a hand out to help Lando up. "I'll get us by her when the time comes... now that I know she's _there_."

Lando hobbled to a half stand, somewhat leaning on Luke's bare shoulder. "We've only been here two hours and I'm already wounded," he swore.

Luke gave Lando his own blaster, preferring to stick with an unlit lightsaber in his hand. "Just like old times, huh Lando?"

Then he turned to Artoo, "Are you getting anything further down that way?" Chewie and Luke took the lead and Artoo was right behind them, beeping about his sensor readings. Han pulled Lando's free arm around his shoulders and adjusted to half-carry the man further down the endless corridor.

Lando groaned, "I'm getting too old for this." He hobbled along, wincing on occasion. He glared at Luke's back. "Why does he always have to be so damned optimistic."

Han was still catching his breath from the previous flee. His eyes darted from dark corner to dark corner as he spoke. "Don't worry pal. We'll be in and out of there before you know it. And then when we go home, you can get laid, too. Then you'll have just as much energy as Luke does."

Lando half smiled, "That's easy for you to say. You're married."

"Married has nothing to do with it." Han grunted as he carried his friend along. "You'll probably have better luck than I will."

The buildings still stood in lower level Coruscant, reaching up into the darkness until they melded together several stories above. What once was a major avenue for foot traffic was empty and dirty, abandon shops were looted, broken windows, falling pipes, age old litter all scattered the ground. Han's voice echoed against the walls, "I think we're coming up on it."

Lando had stopped grunting for a while, but his demeanor was quiet pain. He let go of Han's shoulder so that the man could look around.

Chewie growled from a far corner.

"Yeah?" Han said. "Artoo, go try to plug in."

As the droid rolled towards Chewie, Luke stepped to Han, staring up through the unseen ceiling. Han recognized the expression of the Force at work. "Well?"

Luke pursed his lips, "They're getting busy up there."

Artoo whistled from inside an abandon office. Han grabbed Lando and Luke followed, broken glass crunching under their feet at the walked through the fallen wall into the office. It was even darker in here, but Artoo's lights led the way to the terminal. Lando sat down against the wall, Han started pulling equipment out of the pack, Luke opened up one of Artoo's little doors and Chewie took station at the opening of the office, blaster in hand, eyes darting around.

There was a few seconds of silence between them as they set the equipment up. Through Artoo's terminal, they connected up to an old vid cable, and plugged in the signal to a tiny monitor. When the light of the screen started to glow on Han's face, Lando shifted his body closer to watch over his shoulder. "There. That's the channel."

The men watched the closed circuit channel of an NewsNet report, the camera scanned crowds awaiting to greet the new Emperor, quick takes were given to the different politicians as the planet waited. Then Luke started to look up through the ceiling again. He could feel it. "It's not Palpatine," he whispered.

Lando and Han looked over briefly, but when the vid showed the transport landing, their eyes were back on it. The array of guards and escorts secured the area for the mystery man to step out, then came the new Emperor. A black robe trailed behind him as he stepped out. He bowed in eccentric greeting to those that bowed deeply to him. The hood of the robe hung on his shoulders, Han and Lando studied the face. It was much too young to be Palpatine.

"Luke." Han said, trying to get the Jedi to look at the monitor. "Maybe his kid? I don't recognize him."

Luke's eyes started to narrow, his brow furrowed. He glanced at the screen once to get a look of the face and then looked back up to the ceiling.

Watching the screen, they saw the robed man stop in the middle of the entourage, fold his hands together in a monk like gesture, and bow his head as if in prayer.

Lando looked at Luke again, but the Jedi's eyes had slammed closed and his mouth pinched shut.

"Oh shit."

Without opening his eyes, Luke spoke in a carefully soft voice. "Go now." He whispered roughly. "I'll ... meet you in... the air."

"He knows we're here." Han asked warily.

Luke's teeth were started to clench with concentration, "Not... yet..."

Lando leaned over and whispered. "Do you know who it is?"

"Get..."

When it was clear they had lost Luke to the concentration of covering up their presence, Lando started to stand and Han started pulling the equipment apart. Chewie joined in. Soon, there were hustling as fast as they could. When Han and Lando were ready to start hobbling the three-legged race back to the Falcon, they stopped. "How will you get out?"

Luke didn't respond immediately, but suddenly opened his eyes with a big fat sigh. "I'll get out." He assured. "They're coming for me. They don't know you're here." He pulled himself to a stand and started searching the giant walkway. "I think it's his son, or something. He's young, pretty untrained, but nearly as strong as Palpatine was. Get a message out as soon as you can."

Han stressed his question again, "Yeah but how will you...?"

Luke suddenly flashed a smile as he trotted backwards, in the opposite direction. "You'll see."

When Luke turned and ran, Han shook his head in disappointment. "He's bordering on stupid."

"Yeah. He got that from you." Lando grinned, "C'mon, let's get moving."

* * *

Luke grabbed a power cell and a rope climber and found an abandoned elevator without a car. He climbed two stories to find what was left of the dangling cord and secured the climber pieces to it, then grabbed hold with both hands on the top part, set his feet on the tiny foot hold on the bottom part, and looked up. A flip of a switch, and the climber scaled the cord at five feet per second, carrying Luke along with it. In only a few minutes, Luke was at Level 124 and deep in the inhabited masses of Coruscant.

He unhooked the rope climber and dropped it back down the shaft, already feeling faint touches on the Force of the Emperor looking for him, and finding him again. But now Luke was so close it would head the Dark Man's ability to pinpoint a location. Luke intended to move faster that the Emperor could sense. He ran down the cleaner hallway, unlit lightsaber in hand, and sensed for nearby Imperials. Almost expecting to find a Stormtrooper first, he was slightly hesitant to take advantage of the young Imperial cadet he ran across. Luke shot around the corner and lit his saber in the boy's face. The cadet froze in place in terminal fear and raised his hands in the air.

Two minutes later, the cadet was in his underwear and tied to the desk sneering the Jedi buttoning up a gray and black Imperial jacket with almost naked rank insignia. "Thanks." Luke told him, stuffed the unlit saber in the jacket, and trotted back out into the hall.

Luke marched through a travelway like a cadet trying too hard to be military and was conveniently ignored by stormtroopers and officers. He saluted when necessary, and put a nervous look on his face when higher ranks glanced at him. The act fit the uniform to a tee, and Luke had no problems making his way onto a small pad with rows beyond rows of TIE fighters.

Looking over the activity of the Imperials, he shook his head. TIE fighters didn't have hyperdrive. He needed a bomber or a Lambda shuttle. He marched into the TIEs looking for the right candidate and found it. A TIE interceptor: solar panels bent slightly inward, and the cockpit door wide open. When no one was looking, Luke climbed in, stuffed his body into the tiny corner meant for cargo, and closed his eyes to concentrate.

In less than a minute, the air raid alarms sounded, and Luke smiled. He heard the loudspeaker ordering all pilots to their craft to intercept a rebel ship escaping the system. Luke located the pilot's mind that was headed for this craft and shaded the man's focus so he wouldn't notice Luke in the corner. The pilot climbed in, punched in his code, and power up the ship. Luke reached out with the force and sent a voice into the pilot's head. The pilot searched out the cockpit window, and then opened the door again to look for the source of the voice - outside the ship.

Luke sent the call again, and the pilot climbed out to report as ordered.

Ducking to stay out of view, Luke moved out of the corner and onto the pilot's seat. He reached out of the door and wiped a shroud of confusion over the Force, "Gimme your helmet." He called out casually.

The pilot paused, but took off his helmet and handed it over.

"Thank you." Luke slapped the helmet on his head, closed the hatch, and grabbed the controls. The TIE interceptor rose into the air with a dozen others, ready to blow that pesky rebel craft out of the sky.

Han flew fast and furious. Chewie fired out of the top turret, Lando from the bottom turret, and Artoo had his little clamps clutching the wall to keep his body from rolling around. The TIEs came at them like bees, firing green shots into the sky, and the navcomputer was simply not computing fast enough.

The first TIE that zipped by them was shot in the solar panel from the top turret and splintered in the air, but the second and third... and fourth got several shot in before Lando and Chewie could brush them off. Dead ahead was clear passage, but a wall of TIEs screamed in formation _right_ on their rear, and more were joining the fight in flocks. And they were gaining.

Han glanced back at the navacomputer. "Come on, baby, hurry up."

A TIE interceptor fell back from the rest of the formation and shot at the ass of another TIE, splintering it in the sky. The formation started to break up as confusion rolled through the Imperials, but kept up chunks of the original formation. Luke followed the lead of his gang as if trying to find the same traitor everyone else was.

From the turret, Lando frowned out to the scene. "He's gonna get himself killed."

Han couldn't see the mess behind them, "He can handle it," he reported in the mike, but then he prayed aloud under his breath, "Don't get yourself killed, kid."

Luke's soared his TIE in calm formation with the others, but kept one eye on the ass of the Falcon, now gaining distance because of the distraction, until Han hit it and the thing disappeared in hyperspace.

Instantly, he cranked the stick and spun the TIE wobbling on his axis away from the formation, making it look like he'd been shot. The remaining TIES panicked and started shooting at each other in misunderstanding of who was causing all this.

He kept his eyes closed to keep from getting dizzy with the spinning view and used only the Force as his collision detector. Within a few seconds, he was far enough away from the mess that he slowed his spin and flattened out. He shot a grin out the side of his craft as Coruscant twisted entirely out of view, and hit the hyperdrive for a short spit in any direction.

He was at lightspeed for only a split second before he dropped out again. He could see Coruscant now the size of a pebble in the distance. Luke was laughing a loud, cackle-like laugh as he programmed the hyperdrive at his leisure, and was still laughing when the TIE zipped into hyperspace for home.

* * *

 _At the Senate Meeting, Kess is in the audience with aides and press. Leia is allowing senators speak their minds about an issue without interrupting them. So far, it's been a boring meeting._

Kess turned her eyes to see Leia at the head of the debate table half way across the room. As if on cue, Leia's eyes flicked over to see Kess in the darkened audience. Behind her political stoicism, brown eyes sparkled with new humor.

Kess lifted a brow.

Leia shifted in her seat and turned her visible attention to the senator that was speaking, her face instantly blank again, but her hand gently set down a datapad onto the table of other notes and nudged it a tiny bit in Kess's direction.

 _Come read this._

A flood of curiosity doused her fiery nerves, particularly now that Kess was sensing a bubbling humor from Leia. Kess stepped silently from the audience dais and outside the sharp divide of overhead lighting and darkened nobodies. By the time she rounded to Leia's head of the table, the Minister of State - without breaking her attention of the speech - had taken the datapad off the table and reached it back behind her chair for Kess to grab, palm open.

Kess took a deeper step back into the shadows and Force Pulled the datapad from Leia's hand to her own.

Leia didn't bat an eye. She simply put both hands in her lap and continued to listen to the arguments.

Kess tucked into a darker corner with the note and read.

 **TO: LEIA** **.CMD**

 **FR: HAN** **.MIL**

 **RE:  
**

 **Luke thinks it might be Palpatine's son or similar relation. Strong in the dark side, but young and untrained. They seem good and busy with welcoming him to the throne. Lando will need a med vac and a blood transfusion. Got bit in the leg by a Rancor. All else ok. Back on 66.03.04 or so.**

 **Love you, Han**

 **Oh yeah. One more thing. You're idiot brother is behind us in a TIE. Don't shoot the kid down when we get back.**


	2. R2D2 goes AWOL

_Two days after Victory Day_

* * *

Luke was officially worried. As soon as he was free from the meeting, he trotted down to the CIC bunker to do a little personal investigating and was glad to see Yana Deitrik available for the task. "I need your help to find my Artoo unit."

Yana leaned back in the office chair. "Okay."

Luke folded his arms at his chest and looked like he was a little angry about it. "He's not answering his comm and he hasn't reported in to me, Rogue Group, or the Minister's office. And he's never been gone this long without finding some kind of trouble."

Yana took this in with a grin, "When was the last time you had contact with him?"

"Victory Day, so two days?" His eyes stretched away to recall the details. "After the Memorial ceremony I told him he could either go celebrate with Threepio or be shut down for the night at home. He chose Threepio."

"Do you usually shut him down at night?"

"No, he usually puts himself on standby. But this was um. . . ." Luke grinned awkwardly. His first instinct was to sidestep the truth but he realized Yana would have undoubtedly noticed that her roommate didn't come home that night either.

Yana rubbed her lips together to hide her smile and swiveled her chair back to the terminals. "And Threepio hasn't seen him," she verified.

"No, he said they split up at 22 hundred on Victory night."

"Okay," Yana said and stopped a beat to think. "I take it he doesn't wear a restraining bolt. Does he have a locater?"

Luke rubbed his palm over his face. "I deactivated his locator on our last op and I never got around to turning it back on."

Yana was ready to type but lifted her hands into the air. "No restraining bolt. No locator." Her legs pushed her away from this terminal and she got up to walk to the one at the end of the row. "Okay. I'll start with the manifests to see if he shipped out with anybody. Has he ever run away before?"

"Artoo? _Run away_?" Luke winced a little, but his expression relaxed to an indiscernible pout. "Well, yeah, I suppose he has."

Yana glanced at him between reading messages on the black and yellow screen. "How did you break it to him on Victory Day?"

"Break what to him?"

"Well, I mean," she began to smile anew, gentle to address it openly. "He didn't run off in a jealous rage, did he?"

"Er, no. He and Kess get along just fine."

"All right," she sighed, "In the last forty eight hours, we have shipped out seven R2A1s, a few R2F7s, R2G3s, eh… there's a long list of the R2 units assigned to the Eighth fleet. And they all left yesterday morning."

Luke stepped up behind her. "He's a D2. Can you search for that?"

Yana typed in a search specifically for an R2D2. "Okay. Two. R2D2 Owned and assigned by Chief Wister, private repair engineer for Tisker Ve Uld, Chi System representative currently traveling with the Eighth Fleet on the _Hopockia_. And R2D2. Property of White Group, B wings, stationed aboard the _Mon Eferet_ , also with Eighth fleet."

Luke leaned in to search the screen data over her shoulder. "Can you see how long they've been in service with Eighth? I can't imagine our own military steeling my R2 unit."

"I doubt they would too, unless they didn't realize he was yours." She typed and folded her arms on the desktop. "Chief Wister got his from Ord Mantell about three years ago." She punched a key. "And White Group got theirs from Siv Alsta of Correllia ten years ago." She looked over her shoulder at him. "I would say that means he's still on Yavin 4."

Luke glanced a smile to her comment. "He'd better be." And Luke noticed that Yana had green eyes.

Yana didn't notice his slant double-take because she pushed away from the desk and stood tall. "According to those numbers, we should have six R2D2 units planet-side right now." She moved to a different wall and turned on the holo generator, switched it to digital map mode, and zoomed in to the base.

A few more keypunches and blue notches blinked on amongst the yellow representations of structures. "Blue are the bug catchers." She typed a little more and red dots appeared. "And red are your R2 D2s passing through the bug catchers . . . 182 times in the last 48 hours."

 _Bug catchers:_ checkpoints throughout the base that scanned for transmitters and recording devices. Most of them were in the Council Building and more spread out in tidy patterns in the Pad Complexes. There were a few, as always, in random places on the base such as a barracks hall, a few doors in med lab and, at Luke's own request, on the grinder. What's more is that many of them were moved from month to month just to keep the pattern dynamic. Since working droids by design had memories and recording devices that tripped off the scanners, each droid had to identify itself by model and serial number when it passed by a bug catcher. The event was instantaneous. The droid didn't have to pause its travel to do so, like holding a badge out to pass a familiar security kiosk unhindered. And the scanners were always hidden in the walls. The only way a person could know where the checkpoints were was by looking at this map in the CIC bunker, or by carrying unregistered spy equipment and setting off the alarm.

Luke and Yana looked up Artoo's 26 digit serial number that contained letters and numbers from three different languages and methodically expanded the information on each of the 182 markers to cancel out the one's that weren't Artoo. It took them twenty minutes to do it, but the result was an excellent lead and already a partial explanation. The only red markers left were his favorite droid and, when played in time stamp sequence, they could follow Asrtoo's movements through most of the base.

Yana summarized the events with humorous ease. "So, you kicked out your roommate so the you could be alone with a date at which time the droid went off to go find his own damn party. Artoo hit three checkpoints in the Council Building, probably following Threepio around until he too was relieved of duty. An hour after he left there, he hit the checkpoint at a Droid Repair Shop south of the quad where he got himself a '180 VAC Recharge and an 86w Oil Wash.'

Luke blinked twice. "My Artoo unit went to a health spa?"

"Sounds more like dinner and drinks but, yeah, something like that."

"I should give him the day off more often."

Yana's green eye grinned over. "Will you give _me_ the day off so _I_ can go to a spa?"

Luke had no authority to do so, but he quipped back anyway. "No need. Someday _your_ roommate will kick you out for the night so _she_ can have a date over."

Yana warmed to his humor. "For the record, I'm happy for you."

"Yeah, me too." He sighed hard and looked at the screen again. |Do we know where he went after the 'Droid Spa'?"

Yana she typed and read. "Looks like he left base. He hit two checkpoints in Complex B, entering and leaving, and the last checkpoint marker was leaving through the south gate… at 22:20, day before yesterday."

"He split off from Threepio about 2200."

"So. After being rudely booted from his own recharge station so _you_ could go to the dark side with my roommate, your little guy went to a health spa on a holiday, met up with some friends in Complex B, and took off to find more fun when his buddy had to go home for curfew."

Luke turned his eyes to her. "You have an interesting way of seeing things, Lieutenant."

"And you, Master Jedi sir, don't party enough."

Luke looked back at the map and focused on the last red marker where and when Artoo left for South Base in which the civilian community had no checkpoints to trace through. Artoo had no real reason for being off base unless he were looking for someone or was on an errand for someone. And everyone that he would run errands for, or look for, was on base that night.

Worried again, Luke blew out a sigh."Show me a map of South Base."

Luke's joking demeanor had evaporated, and therefore Yana got serious and quiet again. She zoomed in on a map of the section of the civilian city known only as South Base and added text to identify the buildings as registered in the public mailing list. Luke studied the map only to commit it to memory. He noted one, out of the way, unlabeled building and pointed at it. "What's that?"

Yana turned smiling green eyes to him. "Proof you don't party enough." She flicked her chin at it. "That's the South Base Warehouse."

His tongue tucked thoughtfully to his molar as he considered the place at length. He'd never been there himself but he'd heard the stories, and he'd heard them even before he knew Kess. The South Base Warehouse started out as an overflow barracks during the Battle of Yavin days. The permatemp building received some structural damage, making it non-transportable, and was left behind when the Rebellion fled to Hoth with their tails between their legs. When they returned to the moon years later, the New Alliance had more supporters (and therefore, more money) to build stronger, permanent buildings for their first visible base. The warehouse was forgotten by most, yet the veterans of the early Rebellion could not forget the Victory party it housed that day when young Luke Skywalker blew up the first Death Star and saved all of their lives.

How many times had Wedge tried to get him out there to partake in all that hero worship? Luke didn't care to count. He often responded by noting there were a lot of heroes that day. Even if you only counted the team that fired the fatal shot, Luke had to share this pesky 'Legend' status with Red Five and Artoo Detoo.

Five, if she had an opinion, couldn't care less about hero worship. Artoo Detoo however . . . .

Luke exhaled a grinning groan, thanked Yana with a quiet voice, and noted that his commlink was on in case anyone came looking for him.

* * *

Luke took in the landscape of the base as he drove the topless speeder out to South Base. In a couple of places, housekeeping droids were still unraveling streamers from lampposts and picking up slivers of confetti from the grass. Luke realized how trained people were not to see droids. Nobody noticed them unless they were needed or in the way. The droids that worked restlessly on cleaning the grounds, taking out the garbage, operating the checkpoints, monitoring ICU patients… they never got recognition. Not that they cared. Most droids weren't designed for that sort of thing. Only after many years of not getting one's memory wiped did a droid begin to develop a personality and opinions.

Upon this thought, Luke considered peaking into the depths of Artoo's memory data to see how long the little guy had been around. He wondered why he never wondered about Artoo's history. Of course, he'd have to find the Bolt Bucket first.

He drove slowly through the gate and looked up and down commercial streets whilst considering an android's capacity for emotion. _Did_ Artoo get offended when Luke kicked him out that night? How would Luke have known if he had? Droids didn't leave prints on the Force; no more than an X-wing did anyway.

Then Luke wondered what Five could say if she could talk.

 _Come play with me._

The thought made him smile.

As he slid down the road in his speeder, Luke sensed out to the moods inside each of the businesses checking for the fear of deception or the thrill of stealing. There were a few short-tempered managers and several angry employees, probably in regards to Victory Day clean up still incomplete, but no one seemed preoccupied with a feisty R2 unit.

Before he reached the end of the block, where commercial met residential, Luke pulled over and parked the speeder. He wasn't sure why he hesitated to go out to the South Base Warehouse alone, especially in the middle of a workday when it was probably empty. He set his elbow on the door, dialed his commlink and brought it to his mouth.

"I have forty-five seconds," Leia said.

"I need to talk to Threepio. Artoo's missing."

"Missing?" Leia echoed. "How long?"

"Since Victory night."

"He wasn't with you?" Her voice began to smile.

Luke tried not to sound bashfully guilty. "I was busy."

Leia's dark laugh was warm and mature. "Good for you."

Luke rubbed his lips closed and bit them.

"Here he is." Sounds shifted and static spurted.

Then Threepio's voice came on the line. "Master Luke, what a delight to hear from you. Have you spoken to Artoo recently? He's not answering my calls."

"No, Threepio. I'm actually looking for him right now. Did you two get in a fight on victory night or something?"

"Not at all. We parted in quite friendly circumstances. I was recalled to the Solo residence earlier than anticipated. Artoo left with others to 'kill some time' was his explanation. He said something about not being able to go home so soon."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"No, sir. He did not."

"Those three others? Who were they?"

"IX-34C, R5F5, and S4-77: a supply distributor, an astromech, and a repair diagnostics translator, respectfully, all assigned to duties in Complex B."

"Friends from work," Luke grinned quietly.

"I feel compelled to mention that S4-77 has a history of knocking over of sentient beings when they are intoxicated and IX-34C has a tendency to pick up unclaimed parts when no one is looking."

"Sounds like Artoo has fallen in with a rough crowd."

Threepio was dead serious. "I heartedly agree. I implore you to give him more challenging assignments. I'm concerned for his well being."

"I understand," Luke consoled. "Thanks for your help."

"You're welcome, sir! Anytime I can be of service to you is a pleasure. And if I may, please inquire on me from time to time about his off-duty activities. The things he gets into—"

"Thank you, Threepio. I need to go now."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir. C-3PO out."

Luke's chuckle continued after Threepio hung up. "Next he'll be snorting spice and goosing girl droids in restaurants."

Yana mentioned it too easily that Luke didn't party enough. Kess had been harassing him about it for as long as they'd known each other. Wedge, Han, and Lando had practically given up on him. And now even Artoo was wandering off to have fun without him.

Luke realized there was something about celebrating these victories that he'd been avoiding, something specific to _this_ base and _that_ warehouse. For a long time, he brushed it off as a careless avoidance to that blasted hero worship he didn't solely deserve, but now that he considered it consciously. . . .

He chewed on his lower lip, checked for traffic, and shifted the speeder back into gear.

* * *

A right turn onto an overgrown road and a half mile out to nowhere, Luke drove slow and easy through the jungle so he could soak up the feel of the surroundings. The sports speeder bumped over lumps in the mud toward the abandoned warehouse and Luke slowed to a stop when the big structure came into view. He rested his arms and elbows on the handlebars so he could look the place over and squinted seriously for the signs of activity, new and old.

A half an acre was cleared of trees and grass tried to grow in the mud, but speeder after speeder drove over and parked, stomping out growth just as it got the opportunity to sprout. The warehouse itself was beginning to lean to the right, not enough to notice really; just enough to make the building look drunk too. The original brushed steel walls were starting to rust on the edges. One panel had been smashed, probably by a speeder, and graffiti advertised the proud maker of the dent. Litter speckled the mud and weeds around the building, but all of that was recent. A landscaping droid probably made it out here from time to time to clean up the party mess but that would be lower priority than the rest of the base today.

Luke climbed out of his speeder. His boots sank a little into the mud as he plucked carefully across the open space. Double doors were closed but not locked. He pushed one to slide open. It screeched metal on metal. Light sliced in and lit up the wet pollen in the air. Luke shoved the door open farther so he could use the daylight to look around.

All the furniture was old and used up, recycled for use here instead of getting melted it down for raw material. Bedding, crates, a desk, pieces of a broken runner, all managed to end up here. His boots echoed on the moist concrete floor. This place was like a giant playhouse hidden the back woods.

Luke grinned.

"Artoo?!" He called out, not expecting an answer. The clutter gave him probable cause to find Artoo here, but Luke somehow wasn't expecting the droid to be conscious. He walked the length of the building but found only used paper cups, empty bottles of liquor, and an occasional piece of clothing. He stopped at the plastic crates at the end of the room that resembled a bar and turned around. He stood tall and looked back over the whole of the place.

Why did he avoid this place? Farmboy shyness? Jedi seriousness? Commander superiority? No. None of the above. It was something else.

Luke closed his eyes and tried to feel it.

Laughter. Drama. Frustration let loose. Desires unleashed. Drinks raised in _his_ name. The Living Legend. The super hero that blew up the Death Star. Luke snorted a parental grin. They didn't need _him; t_ hey needed an excuse. The warehouse carried the very essence of soldiers letting off steam.

He tried to remember it for himself, places like this, times like that, but it was a lifetime ago. The music was different now, the dances were weirder, the slang evolved to an entirely different language than what Luke understood. And yet he felt hope for the galaxy that places like this, and times like that, still occurred throughout the New Alliance.

He also realized why he could never attend, and why Kess had to stop. The Jedi couple had the clearing to control it, to diffuse it, to impair it. Everyone else had this warehouse to wind it up and let it go wild.

 _"There's more than one way to skin a mugrat,"_ Han once said in reference to the same issue. Luke understood the comment now, but Jedi politics had nothing to do with Luke's fear of this place.

 _Fear?_

It stopped him short.

His hands opened beside him as if shrugging at a ghost. His brows knitted over his nose. His eyes shifted around the unkempt building, reaching out every sense, only to detect this peaceful day, the singing birds, the ripple of lust and laughter left over from the party that raged in this room.

Luke searched deliberately inward for an answer. It wasn't the party he feared - it was something _under_ the party, if that made any sense. There was something about victory parties that, to him, weren't so victorious.

He resumed his stroll through the building and tried to remember parties he'd attended. He remembered that one Victory Day on Endor when his father, Yoda, and Ben all glowed up together for a brief, resolving hello. He was glad to see his father's image without the helmet and re-breather; he was glad to see Ben and Yoda both with approving smiles in his direction, but that victory was bittersweet at best, for obvious reasons.

Another time, he remembered laughing so hard that alcohol snorted out of his nose. That must have been on Hoth because the guys were teasing him about his parka. They had huddled together in that frozen corner of base, sipping sharp liquor after watch, cracking jokes with Wedge and Wes and Han and Hobbie and Klivian and Zev and Dak. . . .

Luke's stomach hollowed.

Out of that whole list, only Wedge and Han were still around.

And all of them sat around that portable heater warming their liquor in empty CO2 canister cases, telling tales about the 'good old days' . . . back when and Rue and Ralo and Puck and Porkins and Branon and Biggs were all still around.

Biggs Darklighter. . . . strutting through dust outside Toshe's Station, warning Luke to be careful behind the stick or 'Wormie' would end up as a "damp spot on the dark side of some canyon someday."

Luke eyes turned up to the ceiling of the South Base Warehouse, where the troops now gathered by tradition to raise their drinks and toast only Luke Skywalker as the hero of the Battle of Yavin.

Luke shook his head and stepped—

Something rustled under a dirty blanket. Luke's paused his boot to let the mouse scurry away without further trauma before returning his attention to his search.

Luke roamed his way out of the building's back door and mumbled aloud, "If you guys are going to toast a hero of the rebellion, you really should be toasting Artoo."

More crates and old seats littered the slim back yard like an asymmetrical patio. Legless couches and broken tables were draped with resin covers so that the rain didn't rot them out. The varying shapes and sizes of furniture littered with varying shapes and sizes of garbage made the place look like a junkyard.

But this junkyard looked like a Hidden Object game of old battles. Luke's eyes picked out the black metal angle of a TIE fighter's window frame, the laser focus of an X-wing gun, the foot-ramp of an Imperial shuttle.

Luke set his boot on the black sheet metal, now in use as firm foot rug for a couch, He wondered if this came from that one Delta shuttle in which they had found Kess's dead body.

For a split second, his stomach began constrict again, but he quickly cancelled out the feeling by focusing on the truth of it. _She didn't die. She's alive._

 _She's alive._ He huffed a hard sigh of relief and let himself smile at recent memories. _Very alive._

It made him feel better. It made him strong enough to 'handle it', and yet, he stared at his boot on the foot-ramp a moment more, trying to identify what it was he needed to 'handle'.

 _Kess is alive,_ he thought, _but Biggs isn't._

He strolled through the scattered wet furniture and kicked over half-empty drink cups but now was distracted to remember faces from the past. Smiles of soldiers now dead. Fists raised in rebellion before launch.

 _"Pull up!". . . "No, no! I can' handle it—(explosion)._

 _"We've lost main fire control!" . . . "Just hang on!"_

 _CO2 canisters clanked over the portable heater as their voices raised in salute. "To Biggs!"_

Luke rubbed his palm over his eyes and nodded at himself with a Master's discipline. As soon as he was finished with Artoo today, he'd go away somewhere where he could meditate and try to resolve all this survivor's guilt alone.

But a niggling fear wouldn't be set aside.

What if he'd now lost Artoo as well?

Luke raised his face with panic, now taking in the hidden object game with purpose and looked specifically for signs of droid parts. But he found none, only couches and tables draped with resin covers to protect them from the jungles relentless rain.

Then he realized—

Luke stomped to the nearest table yanked off its brown resin cover.

The 'table' was a stack of ammo boxes.

He stepped to another waist-high piece of furniture and yanked a red tarp from it. This one was a broken waiting room chair turned sideways. Luke began to grin as he stomped across the hard mud, ripping off dirty covers and ripped tarps from the various pieces of 'furniture' until, at long last, he found Artoo Detoo hiding under one of them as well.

The mustard-colored resin cover and half-filled paper cups went flying when Luke's fist yanked it free from Artoo's head. The droid wore a crown of a giant sewage washer that allowed his dome to stick up in the center, creating a ring of flat surface around his dome on which to rest red solo cups of alcohol. Only in patches was he still scrubbed clean from the droid spa before the party, but in more places he was smudged with brown mud, graffitied with an orange crayon, and smacked several times with bright red lipstick. A broken string of withered daisies drooped around his shoulders and the cylindrical end of a storm troopers rifle had been secured to the front of his right leg so it would look like the droid was carrying a lightsaber hilt.

With bright eyes and a quiet laugh, Luke lowered to one knee in front of the sleeping machine and admired his clout. "You sure know how to have a good time, don't you?"

Artoo was silent and still.

"Wake up." Luke said, tapping his chassis. "Are you on?"

Artoo didn't flicker.

Luke pressed his mouth and leaned over to open a panel. He had to rip off the toy lightsaber to get it open. He flicked a switch. "Come on, Artoo. It's time to wake up."

The droid wasn't moving.

Luke backed to his knees again. His mouth twisted to the side, considering, then he pulled out his commlink and dialed as he checked Artoo's power circuitry.

"Lendra," she said with a sigh.

"Hey, it's me. You busy?"

"Um, yes." Her voice smiled to admit, "But I'm stuck. What do you need?"

"Er." Luke wrinkled his nose and dug his index finger in to Artoo's innards. "If you need a break, I need some help. I found Artoo but he looks to be," he sat up and snarled at a metal piece of something that was loose inside the droid, "a little under the weather."

He could hear Kess move her comm call out to the hallway. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure. But I can't get him to turn on. I could use a few tools and a second opinion."

"Have tools, will travel." She offered. "Where are you?"

"The South Base Warehouse," he announced with a grin.

She paused a beat, then her voice peeped brightly. "No shit?"

Luke returned to his feet with a smile. "And see if you can bring a pallet runner in case we can't revive him. He won't fit in my speeder." He started to walk back to his speeder to see if he had at least a screwdriver in there somewhere.

"I'll see what I can do," she said. "Give me a few minutes."

With that, they both clicked off. Luke shoved his commlink back to his belt and rummaged around the trunk a while. No tools, but Kess showed up driving an empty pallet runner within minutes, as promised.

The woman was already laughing at him when she parked it beside his speeder. "You are the most unlikely sight to find in this place. Do you know that?"

He gave up on finding tools in his trunk and closed it. "Yes, I do."

She climbed off the runner, grabbing a tool bag in one hand and a toolbox with the other. Kess stepped to him with a secret grin, flirtations tickled on the Force like she was about to ask what he was doing later. Luke could only grin with relief that she didn't die. She was alive.

So many others weren't, but she was. How did he get to be so lucky?

She hardly noticed his darker mood. "Every time they have a party here, the first drink is always toasted to you? Did you know that?"

"But it shouldn't be." He took the toolbox from her hand and turned to walk her to the building. "They should be toasting Artoo."

"Sometimes they do." She noted, "Sometimes they toast a whole ton of people. But here at the warehouse, the first drink always goes to you."

Luke tried to keep the topic off-topic. "Don't they ever toast Lando, or Nieb, or Crix?" He led the way across the cold concrete floor to the back.

"I'm sure they would if the party was on Endor," she pointed out.

Luke shrugged a brow. "Fair point."

He stepped out the back door and across the cluttered yard. Kess stopped her boots to look over the mess with a laugh. "Looks like a missed a doozy!"

Luke turned around in his stroll and teased her for it. "Our party wasn't a 'doozy' enough for you?"

She met his eyes with a darkened smile. "Heh. 'Doozy' is an understatement."

"Agreed." He picked over to Artoo's resting place, who looked like he'd enjoyed a 'doozy' of his own. Luke's heart warmed, at the droid, at the banter with her. He felt light and bright again, floating up and away from that sad melancholy that haunted him a few minutes before.

Kess blurted when she saw him. "Holy smokes, Artoo!" She laughed and fell to her knees on the hard mud in front of the droid. "What the-!"

"He was dressed up as a table."

Kess smiled wildly at the droid's warpaint. "You are so busted!"

Luke remained on his feet behind her. "I can't get a shock out of his battery."

"Uh oh," she murmured and peaked into a panel. "I hope they didn't steal it."

"That would erase his memory, wouldn't it?"

"Over time, it would. If they did it wrong, it would. He may have gaps but… She reached in with a finger and couldn't get a shock out of it either. She set back with a huff.

"I just told you I tried that."

The moistness of the mud was starting to soak into the knees of her uniform. She turned up to face him. "Well are you gonna stand there and back seat pilot this? Or are you gonna get down here and help me?"

Luke already had a wet mud smudged spot on one knee from doing the same, but it blended in with his black uniform. He lowered to both knees this time and tapped open another panel.

"He's still got his power cells."

Kess was squinting in to the other one. "Are they charged?"

He pulled his head out. "Did you break a meter?"

"Well, yeah, but you don't need one for that. Just stick your finger in it."

Luke's flattened his mouth at the grease grunt trick but he did it anyway. He sucked a layer of spit onto his index finger and jammed it between the two leads.

 _Zap!_

He whipped back his hand and wagged his fingers, gritting his teeth at her, trying to be angry for it. "Yep, they're charged."

Kess sat down on her hip to get out of the way and ripped open the blue lock levers that tied the droid together at his midsection. "I can see his lithiums, but I can't see what would have drained them."

Luke pulled the mystery metal piece out of his pocket. "I found this floating around in there."

"That's a piece of a safety seal to a liquid mercury canister."

Luke looked at the piece and his eyebrows rippled, then he looked at Artoo and raised one of them. The parallels continued to jut into Luke's mind. He tried to imagine Artoo slugging down a bottle of liquid mercury and choking the safety seal.

Kess unraveled her hand from Artoo's abdomen and sighed to look at him. "To tell you the truth, I think the guy just needs a jump start."

Luke nodded. That was his assessment as well, but he brought her out for a second opinion about it: "If whatever it was that turned him off, if it's still in there, it could short him out and blow him up if we try."

Kess sighed through her nose and nodded to that.

He was dead serious. "Is it still there?" He fiddled with the safety seal in his hand. It could have been the problem yesterday and it could have been a loose piece tucked harmlessly in an unseen corner for decades.

Kess licked her lower lip and nodded at his severity. "Okay, why don't we open all the hatches and check every exposed circuit so we don't miss anything."

Luke nodded again. "Two pairs of eyes. I don't want to miss something just because one of us doesn't know what we're looking at."

Meticulously, the couple opened every little door and compartment the droid had. They visually inspected every bolt and circuit for foreign objects.

"What's that?" Kess pointed to odd contraption just below Artoo's dome.

"Oh. Check this out." Luke stood on his feet. He demonstrated by pushing open the door with his finger and dropping his lightsaber hilt into the hollow. "And then, on command, he can throw it out at me."

"Clever," Kess complimented.

Luke reached to pull the lightsaber hilt out of Artoo's head, "we used it on—

 _Clank!_

The spring release manually triggered, causing the harness to jam the hilt against the inside of Artoo's dome. Luke jumped back in case the blade ignited. It didn't, but now his lightsaber hilt was stuck in the old and broken launch mechanism inside Artoo's comatose head.

Gingerly, and with a pursed mouth, Luke peaked over the top of him to see the whole mess caught crookedly in Artoo's head, like a screwdriver preventing an overstuffed desk drawer from opening. "Blast."

Kess stood on her knees and peaked carefully over the dome too. "Not quite working as designed anymore, eh?" She grinned up at Luke. "Maybe we should take that out?"

Luke nodded. "Good idea." With a self-depreciating grin, he lifted his fingers aside and closed his eyes to concentrate. Kess was reaching into Artoo's belly with a socket wrench, but she paused that to back away and wait. She knew what he was up to.

In seconds, the lightsaber's powercell separated from the hilt.

And jammed the whole thing a millimeter more.

Now the powercell, the hilt, _and_ the launch harness were all loose objects spring-jammed inside Artoo's dead head.

"Well, I think we know what caused it." Kess pulled out a loose bolt from the 'lightsaber launcher', showed him and set it aside.

"Yeah I think you're right." Luke lowered to his knees beside her and reached in through a different panel with a hand. Twisting his wrist around other modules, Luke grabbed the launch frame and pulled against the spring so Kess would have an easier time removing the remaining bolts.

He watched her nose wrinkle as she peaked in for the next bolt to remove, then watched her cheek as she pressed it against Artoo's belly, wrapping her whole arm under and around other parts in order to get the socket wrench to the right place at the right angle. He brown eyes shifted up and away while her hand blindly groped the guts of his droid. Blond hair frayed from her braids. Mud smeared green coveralls. Her lips peeled away from her teeth her face contorted with grinning focus. She was grubby. She was beautiful. She was alive.

And she was startled, when, without warning, he stood on his knees, took her face with his free hand and kissed her.

Her eyes fell closed to it. She didn't pull her arm out of Artoo, and neither did he, but her body fell toward him. It was just one kiss, but long and lingering. They both pulled back with a new smile and a dizzy sigh.

Refreshed and fuzzy, they resumed work on removing the launch harness. Kess reached in through one panel to get to the pieces while Luke kept his grip inside another panel to keep the spring frame from jamming anything any further.

After a few bolts came out, Kess pulled her arms from the mess and sat back on her feet, eyes above Artoo's head. "Alright. Let it go." Carefully, he adjusted his feet so he could leap for it if need be. He too aimed his eyes at the space above Artoo's open dome panel . . . and let go.

The hilt jumped out of Artoo like a frog, apexed a meter above their heads and came down at an angle. In one fluid move, Luke reached hard, caught it squarely in his palm, and froze.

He grinned over.

"Show off," she grunted, but her eyes were too bright for it to sound like an insult.

He set the hilt down and reached inside Artoo to pluck the power cell out too. Her finger pointed amongst the mess. "Hold that back." He did, and watched her hand come in through a different panel to take out more pieces.

She pulled out an elongated black cap and laughed. "What the hell?" She showed it over the top of Artoo's head at Luke. "Check it out."

"What is that?"

"The cover of a lipstick case."

"Is it yours?"

"No, man, looks like some Nubian brand." She handed it to him so she could reach in for some more. "I even didn't know we had any Nubians on base."

"Force only knows how long it's been in there." Luke fingered the lipstick cover and thumbed over the Nubian script, wondering about the owner of it. He angled a grin of pride at Artoo's lightless eye. "You old rascal."

 _Sproing!_ The spring launched out of Artoo's head and sailed away. They watched it go but neither bothered to catch it. Instead, they worked in careful concert to remove all the remaining pieces of that decrepit project.

Then they got serious and looked over everything again for any other loose pieces and parts tucked into the rest of him. Once they were convinced his case was clear of debris, Luke reached around to the side of Artoo's head and tried the power switch again.

Nothing.

"Damn." Luke began to fret. He didn't want to jump start the little guy for the risk of wiping his brain, but they were out of options.

With all doors and panels wide open, Kess reached up and petted a safe spot on his dome head. "Almost there, buddy."

Luke reached for the PSB12 and handed Kess the battery case. She held it in her lap as he tried to clamp the big, copper alligator clips onto Artoo's power couplings, but the space was tight and the connections unsecure.

"You're hands are smaller. Can you get in there?"

He shifted out of the way and she shifted onto his lap to reach in his stead. She squinted in with the clips and managed to get them in place. Luke scrunched down over top of her to peak in through the same panel.

"You got them in the right way?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure you've got them in the right way?"

"Yes." She tried to sit up but his body was blocking her from backing up.

Luke leaned closer to check. "They're not backwards?"

Kess chuckled and shoved him away. "Would you get out of my lap?"

He sat up again and took the unit from her. "I'll do it."

She gave it over. "Why?"

"Because he's my droid," Luke said with a stiff face on Artoo.

Kess scooted away so Luke could have control of the procedure. He checked one last time that the cables were clipped to the right places, hit the spring-loaded circuit breaker switch inside Artoo's collar, and pulled his hand away to press his thumb on the power charger and-

 ** _Snap!_**

"Yeeeeoooooww!" Artoo screamed. Every little light shined wild and strait and every iris went wide open as Artoo's body and mind were slammed rudely awake. His mechanical scream acquiesced to a sentence of beeps and clicks and warbles as he rattled out a long string of droid-slang cuss words at the two of them.

"Good morning," Luke smiled big.

Artoo's noises were the equivalent of grumbling. He turned slowly to see Lendra and turned back to squint his iris at Luke. His sentence ended with the sound of rancor flatulence.

Luke smiled, proud and relieved. "I guess droids get hangovers too, huh?"

The dome head swiveled back and forth in confusion, warbling a new question.

Kess shrugged. "Yeah, we had to take it out. You had a lot of loose parts floating around in there."

Artoo gurgled something derogatory.

"Yes, I do." Luke assured easily and reached carefully in to take the cables off. He was just happy the droid was going to be okay. "Think you can get around, buddy?"

Artoo whistled affirmative.

Kess grabbed some tools from the ground. Luke rose to his feet and stepped out of the way, waiting for Artoo to find his balance again. The droid struggled a little because his weight had sunk him uncomfortably into the earth, but he lifted himself up, tilted back, and set his best wheel forward to 3WD himself out of the mud.

Kess moved around to pick up all the tools and wrap up the jumper unit. Luke walked with Artoo, kicking garbage out of the way to ease his path, and offered him a nice long visit to the 'Droid Spa' before he grounded Artoo with a restraining bolt.

Artoo tried to argue that it was _he_ that customarily took care of _Luke_ and therefore any restraining bolt that was to be applied would be to secure Luke's fly closed so that Artoo was no longer left to fend amongst the wild mammals.

Luke and Artoo continued to scold each other as the human maneuvered the pallet jack so the droid could roll himself onto it. Kess put the toolbox and bag back in the seating compartment and paused when Luke climbed into the driver's seat of the pallet runner.

"Take my speeder back?"

Kess had already started to feel like she was intruding. She nodded, waved Luke off, and gave Artoo a smack on his dirty silver dome. "Be good."

Artoo turned to watch her hop into the red speeder and drive off. His head swiveled to follow her until it landed on Luke in the driver's seat behind him.

"What?"

"She kissed me," Artoo beeped.

"So?" Luke set the machine in gear.

"You're not jealous?"

Luke laughed softly and pointed out, "You're an android, Artoo."

"So?" Artoo swiveled his head to watch the ride from the front row seat. "I've heard stories," he warbled. "3PO says they're disgusting."

Luke turned and drove the pallet runner out to the dirt road and agreed. "Considering the lipstick smeared on your quarter panels, Artoo, I don't want to know any more of your stories."


	3. Wedge's Advice

**Wedge's Advice**

 _Pad 14, Rogue Group Manager's Office, Zhellday, 1500._

 _The workday before Minister Del'Andre's retirement ceremony._

Kess had to get out of here. And fast.

Datapads lay in an array across her desk, somewhat sorted in piles, but not really, and more cards piled around them. She was short on pads and had to use the same few to switch out cards and boot up data just to reference several reports and solve one problem.

And the problems compounded on each other. Parts to order. Inaccurate inventory records. Scheduling special equipment. Personnel randomly gone for medical appointments or family emergencies. And all the while, a Jedi Master Group Commander Hot Shot Pilot Farmboy who was bound to march right by her desk first thing in the morning and pound the GQ Drill Alarm, again stealing all the birds she was tasked to repair. She managed to sort more data and plan better attacks in the late afternoons and evenings. It was too bad she and the repair crew couldn't just work nights to get all this done.

But her evenings weren't free for that. None of them. Tonight especially. And not because they had some Jedi Training thing going on, but because Minister of State Del'Andre's retirement ceremony was tonight. And 'Master Luke' instructed that he'd pick her up early from the barracks so Kess could get her first taste of hobnobbing with politicians before the retirement ceremony commenced.

Kess propped her elbow on her desk and rubbed a weary eye, wishing she could cancel it, but recognizing maturely that hobnobbing with politicians was a key skill for any basic Jedi Knight - not to mention this was the one subject of the Jedi curriculum that she was far worse at than any of the others.

So severely disinterested in hobnobbing as she was, Kess rarely thought about this upcoming event more than simply blocking off the time on her calendar. And now that it was hardly hours away, she began to wonder how long it would take her to get ready for this damn -

"Oh _shit_!"

Kess dropped her back against her chair and stared with marble white eyes at Teak at his desk across the way.

The blue scales of his face shimmered with humor. His eyes glanced over.

Over at his own desk, Commander Antilles black mess of hair shifted when his head popped up from behind his terminal. "What?"

Kess turned her face to the Commander with all the self-ass-kicking-of-oversight this royal fuck up required. "I don't own a dress."

Black brows knitted, but the man's mouth rippled with humor. "Neither do I."

Teak cleared his throat. "I don't copy. Is that . . . customary?"

Kess whined at herself. "It's traditional . . . bullshit. Sorry." With a groan, she pushed against the armrests to sit back up in her desk chair. "Either of you know a place I can get a set of dress khaki's cleaned in an hour?"

Commander Antilles climbed out of his desk with a datapad en route to someplace else and strutted up to hers on his way out. "I would suggest to just wear your flight suit, but I'm a little too curious what you would look like not covered in grease."

Kess smiled at his playfulness. If she knew him better, she would have scoffed back, "fuck you," but she didn't. To Kess, Wedge Antilles still carried the invisible badge of the rebel who destroyed the _second_ Death Star. For that, Kess awarded the man a greater respect and reverence than most other pilots she knew.

Wedge smirked and punched open the door.

"Wait. Are you going to the reception?"

He paused at the door jam. "Me? No. Why?"

"Then how would you see if I got cleaned up for tonight?" She challenged with a daring arch of her brow.

He hitched a laugh and dropped his shoulder to the wall. "You think the press isn't going to be there taking photocaps of the two Jedi on their first date, you're crazy."

"It isn't a date," she said quickly, then muttered. "Believe me: he has made that _painfully_ clear."

Wedge smiled with friendly respect. "Copy that," and added as he turned to leave. "Now let's see if you can convince the press." He punctuated it with a silly face and left.

Kess buried her face in both palms. The burn of Luke's silent punishment for the Radio Free Yavin prank was still glowing hot in her soul. This Jedi shit was becoming unbearable. Not only did she have to be good in public _and_ private, but she wasn't even allowed to _want_ it any other way. Kess was beginning to feel like she was always on trial.

What she needed more than anything was to be able to talk to someone freely, without receiving judgment; someone who would respond with acceptance of her plight, someone trustworthy enough to keep it all confidential, and mature enough to still give her sage advice at the end.

Too bad grandpa wasn't here.

But the moment she listened to the Force, she realized someone else was.

"Commander?" Kess shot out of her desk chair and rushed out the Manager's Office to see where he went. He was half way to the muster room doors already, but stopped his boots on the duracrete to look back at her approach. Kess trotted up to him, and then caught her throat not sure how to word her request. Finally, timidly, she motioned to the nearby door of the locker room. "Do you have a minute?"

There was a flicker of uncertainty, but Commander Antilles shrugged it off and stepped to gesture her over. Kess closed the door behind them both, alone, and second-guessed what she was doing as she turned to address him.

"You alright?" Friendly care knit his brow.

"I'm sorry, I know this isn't any of your concern but—

Wedge grinned at the floor, and peeked up. He expected this was going to come sooner or later.

"I um . . . I need some advice. Off the record and completely confidential. Shipmate to shipmate kinda thing. Are you okay with that?"

"Sure."

"I got in serious trouble for that joke on the air, even though I'm not the one that did it, nor do I know who it was that did, but I'm the one that got slammed for it."

Wedge shrugged. "He just took it a little too personally."

"He doesn't like people thinking he's human?"

Wedge cringed a little, trying not to admit the truth of that. "Right now I think he's more worried that you don't think he's human."

Her frustrations spilled out in a yelling, cussing, babble. "How the _fuck_ am I supposed to convince everyone else I'm not interested in him if I can't even convince _him_ of that?"

This almost-as-stoic Commander's confused brow-knit crashed into a tight snicker at her outburst. His laugh continued in a breathy giggle to watch her face turn red with embarrassment. "Wow. You've been holding that in for a long time."

Flushing, Kess tried to hide her pink cheeks with a hand, but smiled in spite of it. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine." Wedge was still coming down from his laugh. "He kinda has that affect on people."

"What part?"

"The part where you're always second-guessing yourself." He shifted on his feet and said it straight. "The part where you're always feeling judged."

Her flush went from silly to serious, and now it burned.

Wedge shrugged. "But it only lasts as long until you get to know him, and you realize," he shrugged again, "Luke doesn't judge. He just _doesn't_. And he's likely not second-guessing you nearly as much as you second-guess yourself."

Her eyes hung on nothing in the air. Kess drew in a slow sigh and cleansed her lungs and mind with it.

Wedge angled his head and pointed it out, "He _is_ human. . . . He just needs to learn that a little."

"Yeah, I know. Least I keep trying to tell myself that." Then she smiled at this man's kindness. "He's kind of a . . . an icon. . . Y'know?"

"Yeah," Wedge murmured with deep agreement. " _I know_."

She hitched a new smile. "Maybe I _should_ wear my flight suit tonight. Just to convince him _and_ the galaxy that I'm not trying to—"

"Won't work." To this, Wedge smirked.

"No? Why not?"

The man thought on that one for a long moment before responding. "Because you can't put a coat of paint on a broken bird and expect it to fly."

In other words, pretending it isn't true isn't going to help. It has to not _be_ true.

And now Kess was back to the part about being always on trial, in public or private, with no leeway to even dream about what she wanted to do instead. . . .

"But there is one thing you _can_ do that would convince him _and_ the rest of the galaxy." He offered brightly as he shifted to move for the door, adding in a low voice as a reminder of the fine print, "Since we're talking off the record and completely confidential."

"What's that?" She turned curious eyes to follow his path by her, and that's where his feet stopped.

Wedge angled over an inch to share a secret suggestion and lowered his voice to a husky smoothness. "You could always just date someone else."

Kess realized he was flirting and it made her heart flutter. She already knew him well enough that, on any outings she might accompany Wedge, her flight suit would be acceptable, if not perfectly appropriate. No one to judge. Nothing to second-guess. Entirely accepted as the person Kess already _was_.

The fantasy felt glorious.

Unsure how to respond, she bit her lower lip with her smiling teeth and tucked her flushing face to the floor. Soon, her eyes flicked back up to see if he was serious, if she was reading this message correctly, and she tried using her fledgling senses to learn Wedge's true intent. Was he just another pilot on the prowl? Or was he seriously interested? Either way, Kess's brain blossomed at the alternate fantasy.

Wedge backed up, smug and cocky, perfectly confident leaving this ball in her court, and shrugged again. "Just a thought."

With a wink, he grinned once more and left the locker room.


	4. The Fight on Dagobah (original)

**The Fight on Dagobah (original)**

There was a loud crunch as the body of the ship settled onto the ground. Kess' eyes opened quickly, lacking the morning grogginess from normal sleep, and she sat up totally alert. Her headache was gone and her arm didn't hurt. Not one part of her body felt sore. She looked around in pleasant surprise. The dim lighting in the berthing cabin blinked several times before it went completely out. Heavy foot falls echoed where the floor to the bridge had lowered as a ramp out of the ship.

She hopped out of bed completely refreshed, and dressed in the first set of clothes she ripped from her military issue duffel bag. She heard his boots splash in a puddle, walking away, and unfamiliar cawing of what might have been a bird. She was struggling to pull on a sweatshirt over her arm cast and tank top, but a warm, wet air gently filled the ship and she instantly began to sweat. She tossed the sweatshirt back into the bag and let curiosity plague her mind about where they were. She heard no deep hum of power, no speeders zipping by, no voices. . . . just far away caws and cackles and an occasional splash.

The humidity in the air grew thicker as she approached the ramp and for a moment she thought they were on a remote part of Yavin 4. Then she realized that she had absolutely no idea how long she'd been out. They could have been anywhere.

Kess stepped out onto the surface in bewilderment. The jungle was grayer and swampier than Yavin. Snakes slithered through the trees, the evil cackles she heard were coming from every direction, but usually from a distance (thank the Force). If the ground wasn't a puddle, it was muddy. A thick mist blanketed the dirt and occasionally drifted up into the giant, gnarling trees.

Luke had hiked several meters into the jungle and was just standing there, staring even deeper into the brush.

Within only a few steps, clots of mud clung to her shin high combat boots. She stopped to shake it off once, but soon knew that there was no way of avoiding the extra baggage and just decided to get used to it. A warm breeze blew her long hair over her shoulder, several strands tugging against the bandage on the side of her head and stinging. She stepped up behind him and squinted in the direction he was looking, but couldn't make out anything of interest in the thick foliage up ahead.

"Where are we?" It came out as a whisper by accident. The creepiness of this planet sent chills up her spine even though her skin was already covered with a thin sheet of perspiration.

Luke didn't look at her. "Dagobah," he said as though the location was supposed to be profound.

Kess looked around in nearly a complete circle, looking for any signs of intelligent life other than themselves. "Never heard of it." When he said 'hide out for a few days', she had border colony in mind, maybe even a densely populated vacation spot, but certainly not this. "We're not really going to stay here are we?"

Luke raised a brow at her, but turned around with a smile and started strolling back to the ship. "You've never heard of it because its existence has been forgotten. It's name and its coordinates have been erased from all the navcomputers in the galaxy for over a hundred years. . . . A convenient hide out, wouldn't you think?"

Kess wrinkled her nose at the slithering, swampy jungle. "Yeah, but who would want to hide _here_?"

"Master Yoda did." He called back. He didn't turn around when he pointed directly behind him to the six-foot-tall rats nest of briar patch and vines. "That was his house."

Kess squinted out to the gray-green pile of live spaghetti and thought she detected an actual shape out of the mess. If it was a building at one time, it was completely overgrown by jungle now. But then, this Master Yoda of his could have been a frog for all she knew. Then his house wouldn't have had much to change into.

Suddenly she realized that he was leaving her alone in the depths of the beetle ridden bushes and waded in the mud to rush back to the ship.

Luke brought out an equipment case and plopped it down on a patch of firm, wet ground by the time she caught up. She paused to look questionably at the case as he returned and he came out with another, setting it down next to the first.

She brought up a shy finger, "Um, what are you doing?"

He turned back to the ramp for another load. "Unpacking. What does it look like I'm doing?"

She stepped to the ramp to follow him, but he met her at the dark passageway with one sleeping roll in each hand. She eyebrows raised at him in paranoia, "We're not going to stay in the ship?"

He passed her by and tossed the padded rolls to the growing pile, "Why would we?"

Her eyes shot out of her head and darted around the tress to see the huge snakes and featherless birds. "Why _wouldn't_ we?"

Luke grinned a little and returned for something else. "You can stay in there if you want to. But I've been awake in this thing for days. . . I just need some fresh air, that's all."

She smelled the rotting vegetation and wrinkled her nose. _You call this air fresh?_

It didn't take her long to realize that the cases were for nothing more than a dry places to sit. She joined him at his little campsite when she saw him pull out a ration box. It was then that she noticed that she was starving to death. Even though there were two cases as seating options, she sat on the same case that he did, staring at him innocently.

Luke looked nervously down to the woman he'd gotten in a rip roaring argument with not so long ago, but now sat close by his side like a dog wagging its tail for a treat. He smirked and held up the ration box in a silent offer. Her white teeth flashed and she quickly picked out a finger food to stuff it in her mouth.

He watched her for a moment, grinning quietly at her puppy-like beg for food, and the hard knot he had in his throat for days finally began to soften. The thin material of the tank top clung to her chest and its low cut neck revealed cleavage that was shiny with sweat. He watched her place the last bite of the taqat roll on her tongue and, one by one, suck the crumbs off nail-pointed fingers. She was licking the last morsel off her thumb by the time innocent brown eyes looked up at him, "What's the matter?"

Luke blinked and shook the stars from his head. He gave her the entire ration box and slid off the equipment case to kneel in front of it trying to think of something he needed out of the thing _right now_. He flipped open the metal latches and lifted off the lid thinking that, usually, when his mind wandered off like that, he would bring up some kind of casual conversation about the Force to distract her from noticing it. Now, the Force suddenly felt like a forbidden subject between them and he dug through the box's contents in a stiff silence.

Kess watched his back and ripped a bite off a second helping with her teeth. His shoulders had suddenly tightened; he let out a stiff breath through his nose. These were usual signs that something deep was on his mind and she tried her hand at the only strategy that ever worked: an innocent question on a discomforting subject. "Did those datacards you gave me make it on this trip?"

Luke's movements paused. He pulled his empty hands from the case and turned around to sit down on the ground. He leaned his back against the case, facing her with narrowed eyes when he pulled them from the breast pocket of his khaki shirt. His expression clearly said that he had hoped she wouldn't remember them. He glanced down to identify one from the other, and tossed only one of them over.

She brought her hand up to catch it in the air and raised her brows. She said expectantly as she chewed. "I don't get the other one anymore?"

He dropped his hands and the card to his lap and crossed his ankles in front of him, "I was hoping that, since we are already on this trip, I could talk you into-"

She swallowed the bite quickly to interrupt him, "I am not telling my father about this, Luke. . . . Not now. . . . Not if you want me to live long enough to graduate."

Luke met her stare, closed his mouth, and folded his arms at his chest, "What do you think he's going to do?"

Kess dropped the ration box onto the case next to her, cussing in her mind that the plan backfired again. Quickly, she stood and tried to casually walk away, but paused. There was nowhere to casually go.

Luke watched the stiff sigh through her nose and read the sign clearly that he'd touched on a tender subject. He thought about crossing blades with Darth Vader and recognized that he'd automatically assumed Kess' father could not have been that wicked. Luke had no idea why she was so afraid of him, and therefore, the upcoming incident could very well be as bad, if not worse, that the threats of murder from his own father. He just couldn't imagine how.

Then he reminded himself that he was no longer her teacher and had no right to ask or pressure her on the subject. In fact, he'd decided in hyperspace that the best thing he could do was contain every sliver of unsolicited advice. Hopefully, the sudden lack of attention would pull her back to him that much sooner.

He held the datacard by the corners between his middle finger and his thumb and spinned it softly with his other fingers. He stared at it imagining the data he knew was inside. After she'd reacted so harshly about Vader, he wondered what she was going to do when she heard that Obi Wan and Ben were the same person. For a moment, he considered telling her now, just to get the beating over with.

Kess stepped toward the ship and crooned her neck to study its outer fixtures. "Is there anything on this baby to fix?"

"No. Why?"

She sighed in disappointment and stepped away from it again, "I'm just bored."

He wave a hand at the dense jungle, "Go for a walk," he offered like he didn't really care, and then stressed, "You won't be bored. That's for sure."

Kess scanned the trees and easily spotted the camouflaged lizards and spiders that swarmed them, "No thanks." With a deep sigh she stepped back over to him, leaning over just long enough to grab another taqat from the box in his hand, and sat back on the case. After a bite, she looked out to the trees again, and the only part of her body that didn't have goose bumps was her left arm, motionless in the cast.

She looked down at the cast, the sand-olive plaster was already beginning to fray, and concentrated on what the nerves in her arm were telling her. They told her that the wound didn't hurt at all anymore, and she decided that it was time to take the thing off. "You got any tools?"

"What kind?" he asked through a mouthful.

She studied the thin sheet of plaster that contained her arm. "Something that'll cut."

Luke brushed the crumbs from his hand and pulled the lightsaber from his belt. He held in the air with raised eyebrows.

Her breath stopped when she saw it and lowered her voice, "I _don't_ think so."

He let out a sick grin and jammed the D-ring back in its latch. "There's probably something in that box," he said with a casual gesture.

Kess went to the brown case he pointed to and pulled off its lid. The tense silence between them was amplified by the wild cawing of the far off birds and the quiet splashes from the nearby amphibians. With a deep sigh of depression, she found a set of heavy duty shears and sat down on the ground in front of the case. She tried to ignore him, since he seemed to be trying to ignore her, and struggled to bring her right arm to an angle that wouldn't cut off her fingers as well.

"Want some help?" he offered, but there was a tone in his voice that poked deeply into her aggravation.

Kess dropped her hands to her lap, " _What_ is your problem?"

Luke shrugged and perused the ration box for the next morsel, but the tone in his voice was still there. "I'm sorry. I thought I was being polite."

She brought up the shears and whined at him, "Well, you're not trying very hard." She snipped at the plaster on the back of her hand, "You've been so friggin' quiet and everything you do say has this icy tone in it."

Luke didn't look at her, "Do you blame me?"

Kess pressed her lips together and glared at him for a second, but went back to the operation on her arm. "If you didn't want me to quit so bad then why didn't you try to talk me out of it?"

Luke bit the side of his tongue in a curse. The forbidden subject wasn't going to be ignored, but Luke no longer had the patience to try to avoid a fight. "If you wanted me to talk you out of it, then you shouldn't have bothered to quit." His deep voice went even deeper. "I don't take well to mind games."

The insult hit her as hard as it was supposed to and she gave him the same grating tone in return, "Well, _honesty_ sure as hell wasn't working."

Luke's chewing came to a halt and his eyes drilled holes in her head. "I had very good reasons for not telling you-!"

" _And_ they were?"

He pointed the finger food at her roughly, "I was afraid that I was going to get that _very_ reaction. I _knew_ you wouldn't be able to handle it."

Kess curled her lip at him, "I didn't quit because he's was your father, I quit because I'm sick of being left in the dark. You didn't tell me about Vader, and even now you won't tell me what you know about grandpa." She waved a hand at the datacard that had found its way back to his breast pocket and started pulling the shredded plaster from her arm.

Luke closed his eyes, pressed his mouth and sighed stiffly.

"Ever since that day grandpa showed up, you've been tight as a drum." Brown eyes flared at him, and were scared about bringing it up again, all at the same time. "You're 'big secrets' don't work well with your 'big mistakes', Luke." She chuckled sadly as she kneaded her arms muscles awake again. "Sometimes I wish you _would_ turn to the dark side for a little while, even if you have to turn into Vader Junior to do it. . . just so I can get one or the other out of you."

His nose curled in the air at this, "What do you think I'd do if I turned?" He put a hand on his knee and leaned to eye her. "Do you think _that's_ what's going to get me to lower you to the ground and-" his chest yanked in the air before he said it. He couldn't even say the words.

Brown eyes flicked up at his sudden silence, and they started to smile at his expression . Kess lifted her chin with daring. "Say it."

Luke's heart physically swelled with a sweet sort of pain. He tried to cool it off with carefully breathing, but it didn't do much good. He closed his eyes and swallowed. "Not until you're training's over."

"My training _is_ over," she corrected, thick with insinuation. "I quit. . . Remember?"

Luke stared at her for a long time. His voice came out nervous, "Well, you're not training with _me_ , but you're still training to be a Jedi. . . . " His eyes squinted at her uncomfortably, realizing that she never actually _said_ she'd continue without him.

Kess pulled the shredded plaster from her arm and kneaded the sleeping shoulder muscles. She chuckled at him, "Do you realize that it took you a whole ten seconds to think that one up?"

Luke blinked again and pulled his eyes to his lap. He wiped a hand over his face, cursing himself under his breath.

Kess grinned at him, "You know, every time you do that, you just get more frustrated." She folded her arms at her chest, "and then you just get even more pissed off at yourself the next time you do it."

He was still rubbing his wrinkled nose. "Do what?"

"Try to stomp out your emotions like that." She suddenly giggled at him and whipped her hair over her shoulder. She looked down at her wrist as she rubbed it awake. "It's kind of cute actually," she muttered a bittersweet grin.

Luke looked at her with sarcasm, "Well, let me go find my father's helmet and let's just see how cute I can get."

Her eyes twinkled at him, "You want to know what I think?"

Luke pushed himself off the ground. "No."

Her smile widened. "I think that you're scared you are going to turn in to your father more than anyone else is. You get mad at yourself every time you show any emotion at all, you won't even let yourself laugh without feeling guilty about it." She crossed her legs and leaned forward. "You are so convinced that you have to control _all_ your feelings that you're suffocating and it's driving you nuts."

Luke's defenses skyrocketed for reasons he could not quite pinpoint. He tried to rub the ripples from his forehead and stepped away from the tiny campsite. He placed one hand on his hip and hissed at her, " _You_ are the one that is driving me nuts." He needed to go meditate again. He needed to get out of the intense company, the insinuating questions, the nagging. . . He started to walk away.

Kess swallowed her giggle and rose her voice at his growing distance. "That's just because I can read you like a book, _without_ the use of the Force, and you _can't stand it_."

He turned with a wince and a whine, "If you could read me that well, we wouldn't have gotten into this fight in the first place."

She was still sitting down, resting easily against the equipment case, but her chin lifted high to stare at him down her nose. "Fine." She said loud and quick, but there was a grin in her eyes just before she closed them and lifted her hand in his direction.

Luke's eyes flashed wide as he instinctively jumped back when her Force ability prodded at his chest to peak inside. He'd forgotten that he wasn't the only one with this ability anymore. He slammed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. He didn't have to lift his hand to keep her from getting in. "You're not invited."

"You see mine all the time," she argued and wrinkled her nose to keep wriggling her way into his soul, just to see what was coloring up his cloud.

His gritted teeth smiled a little. He put his hands on his hips and let his chin drop. "That's only because you advertise it." His face calmed a great deal, and as it did, Kess' wrinkled that much more.

"Owe!" Her eyes opened and glared at him. She shook her hand in the air as if he'd just pinched it.

No matter how trained she got, he was still going to be nearly twice as strong. He was Darth Vader's offspring after all. His eyes opened to glare this reminder at her, but the blue of his eyes were filled with something else entirely. He looked at her like a mortal that was so brokenhearted at the moment that he wasn't _half_ a strong.

Her voice softened a little, and her chin lifted again, "You work so hard to keep me from seeing what's in your chest that you forget it comes out of your eyes just as loudly."

Luke closed his eyes and folded his lips closed again. There was a small knit between his brows when he dropped his hands from his hips. He turned his back to her and started strutting rapidly away.

Her confidence disintegrated when he walked right by the ramp of the ship and kept walking. "Where are you going?"

"To get some firewood," he said without turning. His stroll had quickened into the shrubbery.

She scrambled to her feet and called out, pointing at the unmistakable unit in the open case behind her, "Why don't you just use the heat-lantern?"

He ducked under a low tree branch and snapped back, "Because I feel like doing it the old fashioned way!"

Force senses or not, she was now convinced she could read him as well as she claimed. Kess bit her lower lip to keep from smiling, "Want some help!"

"No!"

And then he was out of sight. Kess giggled at his desperate departure as she sat down again. She sat back down pull the ration box into her lap and ate with both hands.

* * *

Over an hour later and a kilometer away, Luke ripped a dead limb from a tree, clenching his teeth in the process and tossing it roughly into the small scattered pile.

He just needed time away from her, he convinced himself. Yes, time. A few hours to not have to listen to the eager questions or the impatience in her voice. Time away from the flirting and the arguing. Time where he didn't have to bite his own tongue or hold his own hands down. He reached up the gnarling trunk again and cussed out loud. "Women." He ripped a small branch from its mother and threw it roughly on the ground. "Why did my first apprentice have to be a woman?" The word and its synonyms rolled in his head, _women. . . vixens. . . aliens. . . ._

And her name followed it _. Kesselia Kenobi Lendra. . . Skywalker_. . . .

His movements paused as he thought about it. _He_ wanted children. _He_ wanted a quiet place on a quiet planet with no Empire and no Alliance. No military and no politics. He wanted to laugh out loud without the people around thinking that he'd lost his mind. He wanted to lose his temper without everyone, including himself, thinking he'd suddenly change into Vader. He remembered moments of her exploding temper and the sound of her free laughter and he wanted to be eighteen years old again; a young, eccentric, reckless farm boy strutting up to a city girl in the streets of Mos Eisley, and flirt his way into a date.

Luke's shoulder collapsed into the gray trunk as he realized it.

He wanted to be human again.

"Human mating customs, strange they are." The familiar frog-like voice said aloud and cackled his cackley laugh, "Yes, yes. Very strange indeed."

Luke closed his eyes and his head dropped into the tree trunk.

" _Jedi_ mating customs. . ." the voice lowered in smiling seriousness, " _different subject entirely_." Master Yoda glowed into existence with the same old wide eyes, the same old gimerstick, and the same old cryptic wisdom.

Luke rolled his back onto the tree and smiled weakly at his Master, thanking the Force that someone showed up to clue him in on what he was doing wrong.

Yoda stepped just feet from where he stood, continuing the instruction, "With human Jedi, stronger the need to mate is, because they _know_."

Luke slid his back down on the tree and sat on the ground. He propped his elbows on his knees and dug his fingers into his bangs. "They know each other," he clarified quietly. It made perfect sense. "When you can sense the other's emotions, feel what they're feeling, know what their thinking. . . you fall in love a hell of a lot faster." He rubbed his temple and slammed his eyes shut. He didn't just say _that_ word out loud, did he?

Master Yoda waddled forward to him and pointed the gimerstick at him. "Remember your lessons. Every emotion you had, you mastered control. Love is no different. Complex, it is not. Stronger than the others," he shook his head as if thinking, "it is not."

Luke asked timidly, "Is it on the dark side?"

Master Yoda's eyes widened and his ears perked as he chortled at the boy. "Hee hee hee. If the dark side love is, than how would we breed more Jedi? Hmm?"

Luke dropped his head and smiled pathetically as the 900 year old Master laughed at him. Here he was, a full grown man and he still needed fatherly advice about women. He had grown so lonely over the years that it occasionally drove him tears. That loneliness had mutated into pure frustration when the young, brown-eyed, Force sensitive, city girl was planted right in front of him and he couldn't touch her. It was almost like the woman was hand picked for him. She would be his first Jedi, with the same interest in decrypting the Force that he had. She had the same dedication to the New Alliance and her commission. She knew more about Artoo and his X-wing than _he_ did. She had an attitude. She had _fun_.

Yoda looked at him seriously. "A Jedi Master you are. . . You tell me." He leaned on his stick and began to turn away. "Tell me. How do you control an emotion?"

Luke dropped his head back against the tree and swallowed hard at the answer, "You face it."

Yoda frowned and nodded, "Anger. Tell me how do you face anger."

Luke put his hands out in front of him and dismantled the idea, "You investigate it, interrogate it. . . pick it apart and calm the different pieces-"

Yoda roughly pointed the gimerstick at him, "And you don't calm it with violence!"

Luke breathed slowly, "Right."

"No different love is. Calm the pieces." Yoda lowered his chin, "But not with mating."

Luke opened his mouth to defend himself, but knew better. He sighed wearily again, gave Master Yoda a weak smile and nodded. "I can't touch her until her training is over," he whispered in disappointment. "Just like Ben said."

Yoda's hairy brows raised in humor at him. "Already touch her often you do. It is she who cannot touch you."

Luke's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "No, Master, what I meant was-"

" _Hech_!" Yoda cursed him for questioning him and stabbed his gimerstick at the ground "Know what you meant, _I do_."

Luke angled his head, "If I let her touch me, it's going to make it worse."

The little man perked up again, "For whom?"

Luke swallowed. His eyes shifted to think on that.

Yoda's round face and wrinkled mouth aimed at him. " _Control_. . . . Do not _deny_."

Luke closed his eyes in complete understanding. Stuffing the emotions back down his throat was the wrong example. Exploiting any teacher-student relationship was all out bad karma, but Luke had used the law like a crutch. Deep down in her Force-sensitive soul, she knew exactly how Luke felt about her, making him the complete hypocrite. He was so busy trying to teach her how to bend in the wind, he hadn't realized how stiffly he was keeping her at arms length with a rigidly locked elbow.

Yoda waddled up so close that Luke could have reached out and verified that the being wasn't really standing there. Yoda rose a hand and a Force-powered finger print pressed deep into Luke's chest. "Let her _know_ … the way she knows _how_ to know." If his stick were real too, it would have poked Luke in the chest. "You know. She does not know." He sighed, " _That_ is why you argue."

Luke thought on this a long moment and nodded. "I understand."

"Abbreviated your training was." Yoda said quietly. "Teach you everything we could not. On _this_ emotion, more than her Jedi Master, Kesselia knows… and a better Master you will be if from your apprentice you learn."

Luke's lips parted with a want to argue. He didn't realize how much of a control freak he'd become about it until someone ordered him to let some of it go. The thought of letting her in was terrifying.

Yoda looked at the ground for a second and turned away, "The tree you came for." He paused looking in the apprentice's direction. "She is not ready." He leaned on his gimerstick and began to step away. "Test when ready. . . not when convenient."

Luke bit his lips together. The tree was a desperate idea to inadvertently show her the strength of the dark side and hopefully convince her to come back. She wasn't ready to venture out on her own; especially after she had to use the dark side to push Rogue Twelve away from the Star Destroyer. Luke knew how close she had come to turning.

In his regression, Yoda started to waddle away.

Luke scrambled to stand, "Master Yoda, wait."

Yoda stopped and turned patiently around, raising his chin.

Luke shoulders began to melt. "Ben. . . " Just when he expected it to be denied, he realized how badly he wanted it. "Does he disapprove?"

Yoda's ears drooped a little, "Biased Obi Wan is. To him, like a son you are. And a granddaughter she is." His eyebrows rose with humor, "Heh, _very_ biased."

Luke blinked at him childishly. "I need to know."

Yoda continued to waddle away as though he hadn't heard him. "Human mating customs. _Hech_." The green elderly rose his voice to a guttural growl. "Who introduced you?" He paused and glanced back at Luke one more time with a grin in his giant eyes.

In other words, don't ask stupid questions. Embarrassed, Luke put his hands on his hips and smiled at the ground. He looked back up to Yoda with a new glow to his face. "Thank you."

" _Hmph_ ," Yoda grumbled as if this whole thing was a burden to his schedule. His eyes smiled at Luke before he turned and leaned on his stick. As he waddled away, his ethereal image faded into the dark jungle.

Luke sat down where he stood and put the lesson to work. The birds cooed, the frogs croaked and Luke meditated to figure this out. When he kissed her in the clearing, he had momentarily lost control. He would have taken her down and made love to her right then and there if Ben hadn't shown up. But he would have done it out of sexual frustration.

He hadn't fallen for her yet. Not like now. _That's_ what he was scolded for.

He had worked so hard to ignore everything that was going on inside. He had denied to himself that he was losing sight of the objective as though denial would make the problem go away. But the problem was not going to go away. The _emotion_ was not going to go away.

Luke smiled and blinked rapidly as he happily did what he was told. With a deep, calming sigh, he closed his eyes and concentrated, digging into his swirling colorful cloud. He reached the giant red lump in the corner, bursting at the seems in invisible containment, and let it out.


End file.
